


won't tell you who i'm singing towards

by Fluoradine



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emo au (shh that's a thing now), Falling In Love, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Pining, also there's some other band characters but they're just side, idk I've been joshler deprived for too long, this will only be two chapters it's pretty short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-14 09:32:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7165700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluoradine/pseuds/Fluoradine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tyler Joseph is an emo kid, and in which he finds himself writing love songs to someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, um...it's been a while since I actually posted a new story...over a year, I think? This is just a quick oneshot which I'm gonna write a follow-up for soon. I can't remember where I got the idea from, but enjoy!

If you asked anyone to describe Tyler Joseph, the first words that would come to mind would probably be 'strange', 'creepy', 'quiet', and 'that emo kid'. If you saw him and his clique around, you would probably go in the other direction, unless you enjoyed poetry and early Blink-182 music. They were the kids that skipped class and listened to the best and loudest bands on vinyl, the ones that planned on saving up for concert tickets, the ones that talked about deeper meaning and life beyond what they knew, but never actually took a philosophy course. In short, they were poets and musicians who were just really bad at being...well, poets and musicians.  
  
Tyler Joseph wasn't really ever popular. He had a few friends in his previous years of school, but he couldn't exactly categorize himself into any of the labels set out by who-knows to control everyone else. He was artistic, and loved poetry, but he never wanted to show anyone anything he wrote. It was too personal, he told himself, too dark. No one wants to hear you write about tragedy, anyway. He liked to play music, but he couldn't play anything that has a windpipe and valves, which was the only thing the school offered. His old friends were too afraid of him to really actually like him, so he had nowhere to go except be alone.  
  
Of course, that was until he met a couple of guys who were wearing (at the time) a copious amount of eye makeup and who liked all the bands Tyler listened to, and soon he started to hang out with them. From there he got introduced to Pete, Patrick, Ryan, Gerard, and Josh, all fellow students who he seriously couldn't remember actually existing in the past (a fact which took a little convincing that they were, indeed real), and started to have a label to belong to. Since then, he'd been a little more open, and a little more reserved. By being associated with people like them he'd gained a reputation as a textbook emo kid, but that still didn't mean he could just let loose all his emotions upon his new found friends (of whom, he wasn't even sure were his friends). He wasn't exactly sure if he was pretending to be like them, or if he actually was, and was just reluctant to admit it.  
  
So, like it or not, Tyler Joseph was a textbook emo. Every morning he sorted through his closet of black, black, and grey clothes, took his medicine, said goodbye to his sister (who wouldn't wave back in fear of her eighth grade classmates seeing that she was related to the emo kid), and arrived at school. He'd sit out on the steps during his spare with Ryan and Pete, who wanted to ask if he liked what'd they'd written last night in a fit of emotion. He'd eat lunch with Gerard and Patrick, who wanted to ask if they should try for Warped Tour tickets again this year. And he'd walk around after school with Josh, who liked to tap rhythms on the lockers and wished Tyler didn't notice. Things were normal, like this. Things were okay like this.  
  
Out of all the friends he had, Josh was probably the best one. He was an anxious boy with colourful hair who wanted to be in a band someday, although he wasn't sure there would be too many opportunities for a trumpet-playing stage nervous kid who was still in high school. Gerard would tease him about that sometimes, and Patrick would have to tell him to stop before Tyler even thought to. Tyler said that if he ever learned to play guitar, he'd make a band with him. They all wanted to be in a band, maybe they could make it together? Pete was pretty dead-set on making a name for himself once he graduated, and Tyler always had that nagging fear that he wouldn't be able to follow him to that future. But if it was just him and his best friend, it might be different.....that meaning, if Josh actually was his best friend, and not just another emo kid like him.  
  
Tyler never really had friends, and he still considered it to be that he didn't. He liked the emo kids, he did, especially Josh, but...maybe there was something different. Because maybe, and just maybe, the strange and quiet person was a product of him lying to himself, and making him hide what was on his true side.  
  
Maybe Tyler Joseph was truly a beautiful artist, who wasn't constantly plagued by darkness, but by something quite the opposite. Maybe, when he got home, and took off all the black clothes and fake makeup to slip into the same sweater he wore yesterday, he climbed into the attic, the attic where he had his notebooks and papers, strewn all over and beneath the floorboards. And maybe he had a ukulele, an old ukulele that he'd gotten when he was a kid that he had outgrown years ago but still kept in the corner of his attic. And maybe he'd take that ukulele, and he'd take out his notebooks and papers, and he'd write a song. A simple song for a simple boy, with a simple heart and a simple mind (at least at the time).  
  
'Oh, miss believer, my pretty sleeper, your twisted mind is like snow on the road...'  
  
Here, there was no faking, whether he knew it or not. Here, he wasn't Tyler Joseph, he was just Tyler, playing his ukulele, writing songs for....someone else.  
  
'I don't care what's in your hair, I just wanna know what's on your mind, I used to say I wanna die before I'm old but because of you I might think twice...'  
  
You. Who was that person he was singing about all the time? He never crushed on anyone, that was a pretty meaningless thing to do. No one would ever love him back, of course. He'd never been in love, of course. He just knew about it from movies and from songs, and for some reason listening to people talk about it made it feel like it was real.  
  
'You're an angel fallen down, won't you tell us of the clouds? You have fallen from the sky, how high? How high?'  
  
This was secret, of course. What he did up here, what he was while he was alone....no one needed to know. No one wanted to know. Surely whoever he was singing towards wouldn't want to see how in love he was, how ridiculously, euphorically, how irrevocably he was in love with....  
  
'You're the tear in my heart, I'm alive, you're the tear in my heart, I'm on fire, you're the tear in my heart, take me higher than I've ever been....'  
  
And maybe there was a little piece of him that wanted that person to know. Maybe he wanted to show him his songs, play something nice for him and not worry what anyone would say. Maybe, maybe there was the smallest hope that he would be up here someday, too, that he'd follow Tyler into the attic, Tyler in his sweater with his ukulele and love songs, and maybe he....they....  
  
'Take my hand, take my whole life too, cause I can't help falling in love with you.'  
  
Maybe. Maybe he was in love. Maybe it was the worst thing in the world. Maybe he could never tell him. Maybe he'd be reduced to feeling his heart twist so hard it hurt and bled whenever he looked at him, whenever he let up his guard and smiled, whenever he thought of him sitting next to him and listening to his words, holding his hand and kissing his cheek. But no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't let Josh go. Not the thought of him, not the idea of them together, never...  
  
But it was a secret. But even if he couldn't let him go up here, he had to once he went back downstairs. Back at school, Tyler was Tyler Joseph again, and Josh was just another emo kid who played the drums and wanted to be in a band someday. He wasn't in love with him once he was with him again. He was emotionless and labeled, and no matter how much he hated that, the only other choice would be to be alone, and he desperately did not want to be alone. He didn't want to be vulnerable. Everyone else could write poetry about sadness and raw emotion, and here he was, writing about someone who he could never have.  
  
So, when all the maybes and what ifs were done, Tyler Joseph would leave the attic and stuff away his ukulele, put back on his black clothes, take his medicine, talk to his friends about their poetry, their music, but never his. He'd walk down the hallway with Josh while he tapped his fingers on the lockers and Tyler would remember the way it sounded when it echoed on the empty space inside. He'd talk about making a band someday and learning how to play for him, meaning every single word of it. He'd see the same colours of his hair in his eyes every time he looked at them, get so lost that he felt like a traveler on a winter's night without a map or a road, and who would come find him? Who would rescue him, except....  
  
No. He would have to drag himself out, every day, every time he got too close to breaking and telling him everything, he'd have to remember who he was. He wasn't a lovestruck teenager who wrote love songs for a boy who most likely barely ever thought of him, no. He was Tyler Joseph. Strange, creepy, quiet, that emo kid.  
  
And if that meant turning all the truths into maybes...  
  
If that meant never being alone when he knew he would always truly be alone...  
  
Then he would do it for him.  
  
Whoever he was, anyways.


	2. Chapter 2

Welcome to Tyler’s mind. Dark clouds spat out by his demons encircle spirals of colour and pastel, a beautiful flower garden trying its hardest to grow behind his face. When he wasn’t being plagued by doubt and terror cooked up by his illness and the medicine that was supposed to stop it, he daydreamed. Daydreaming was better than unconscious dreaming, Tyler though. When he was awake he didn’t have to fear falling asleep and losing his train of thought. His mind could wander aimlessly for as long as it wanted without interruption from the dark.  
  
The topic of his daydreams tended to vary along with the seasons. During the fall, while teachers droned on about whatever they had been paid to drill into their barely-awake students minds, Tyler imagined himself as an award-winning author, and a famous artist. He liked the impossible during the fall. It reminded him that while he felt trapped now, what with his illnesses and secrets, he might not be tomorrow. During the winter, he made up stories about a man who had a bird on his shoulder, speaking perfect English, telling him to walk into the water and not hold his breath. He found himself inside his head and talking to himself more often than usual during the winter. Most of the time, the story was the one thing keeping him company, which wasn’t helpful, since he couldn’t help but think that the same bird was on his shoulder as well.  
  
When the winter snow cleared and turned to spring, Tyler daydreamed of what would come next, after all this was over and he was on to something new. He could see his friends jumping off to join bands, some of them crashing to the ground, but some of them flying off with the dream. But what was next for him always varied. Sometimes he saw himself with a regular office job, coming home at six every day to a shabby apartment in Ohio. Other times he saw himself never coming home, leaving the house with the door open at some point during university and making the decision to stay wherever he went.  
  
But during the summer, Tyler daydreamed of what he wanted to come next. He wanted a house somewhere sunny, the skin on his arms pristine, his clothes loose enough for him to breathe without choking. He wanted a notebook filled with only good memories and love songs, the pages of it graced with someone else’s handwriting as well as his own. He wanted to be able to sing without being afraid of someone hearing him, to love without being afraid of someone believing him. And never once did he consider any of this possible. That was all it was, after all. A daydream. His mind would always be a wilted garden, and someone else would never know that they were his someone else.  
  
“You don’t think that there could be life on other planets?” Josh asked him one day after school had ended. He was tapping the melody to Twist and Shout with two pencils on the ridge of a plant pot.  
  
“I’m not saying that there couldn’t be, I’m just saying it’s improbable.” Tyler said. There were three kids playing jump-rope across the street from where they sat outside the school. A short girl tripped over the rope, and the other two sighed in discontent. Now they had to start all over again.  
  
"But we can’t be alone. I mean, what a waste of space, right?”  
  
A car pulled up to the sidewalk, and a tall boy climbed inside. Tyler could hear a faint radio broadcast which appeared to be on the dangers of fast food playing from inside the car for a split second before the door shut, and it pulled away. “Earth is weird. We’re just right. Right space, right time, right materials…in writing terms, we’re a pretty boring character.”  
  
Josh laughed. “The earth is a pretty one-dimensional character.”  
  
They sat in silence for a minute or two, the world still going on, as it always does. Josh picked a new song to tap out. Tyler hummed a song he’d heard on the radio.  
  
“Okay, so if you don’t believe in aliens, do you believe in fortune-tellers?” Josh asked after a while.  
  
“The fact that they exist, well, yes, but the fortunes…maybe.”  
  
“What do you mean, maybe? Sometimes you believe in them?”  
  
“Well, if they’re good fortunes. Then they’re pretty good."  
  
“That’s cheating, you can’t just take only the good ones.”  
  
Tyler shrugged his shoulders. “Why not? Say I went to a fortune place, I don’t want them to tell me I’m gonna die. Pretty sure I can do that myself.”  
  
Josh nodded unsurely. “Okay…ideal fortune?”  
  
Obvious. ‘My mind will stop trying to kill me, and my someone else will get to be with me.’ But what he said was “ ‘Sometime in the future, you will receive an endless supply of tacos.’ ”  
  
Josh laughed at that. “So, aliens and fortunes are a maybe. How about wishes?”  
  
Tyler shook his head. Wishes were pretty much meaningless to him, he barely made them in this state.  
  
“Superpowers?”  
  
Another no.  
  
“Soulmates?”  
  
A pause. “Maybe.” Tyler answered. “If you love them enough.”  
  
“That’s fair.” Josh said.  
  
"You?”  
  
Another pause. “Yeah.” he said. “Not perfectly, but as far as perfect goes, I guess you could said I do.”  
  
Tyler nodded. One half of him was jumping up and down, waving itself around like an impatient student who thought they knew the answer, and the other half was screeching and beating enough terms of self-doubt into him that he didn’t say anything else. Instead, he stood up. “I gotta go.” he said. Josh had stopped tapping the pencils on the pot rim. Tyler hadn’t noticed, apparently. “Homework and all.”  
  
Josh nodded his version of a goodbye, and Tyler was off. As he walked to his stop, he watched the insides of the cars on the road. No car he saw had just one person inside. In some was a whole family, with a kid in a carseat and two parents up front, most times arguing about where the next turn was. It was the same when he got on the bus. The man sitting across from him had earphones in, and was bobbing his head along to an invisible bass line. Two girls a few seats away were having a hushed conversation in Spanish, one of them with tears in her eyes. The driver was wearing a hoodie, and his eyes looked dead every time he turned around to let passengers on and off, on and off, on and off.  
  
Everyone was living. Everyone was alive. Everyone was afraid of something, and everyone loved something. That was something Tyler did every time he started to lose himself. One quick look around and he could suddenly see everything, and he remembered that he wasn’t special. He was just one seat on a bus, one desk in the classroom, one tiny speck in the universe, no matter if aliens existed or not. And the world didn’t care what he thought, what he got excited about, if he believed that he could fall in love so quickly with the person sitting next to him….or not. He had to remind himself that he was just Tyler Joseph, whether he was someone’s best friend or a stranger.  
  
And that it would be ridiculous for anyone to ever care about him as anything more.

  


Welcome, again, to Tyler’s mind. Asleep and dreaming, tired out from a day of being beaten senseless by demons and medicine, searching for peace in the darkness of the night. His eyes take their break and the brain generates a movie, this one with a happy ending, in which Tyler can cease from worry for at least four hours. Sleep is a song with no words, instruments playing their sweet melody until they can't be heard anymore.  
  
But now, take a look inside his phone. Or, more specifically, the message forming on the screen. It's earlier than any person without some sort of haunting inside them should be awake at, but the person on the other side doesn't care. He's typing and deleting, erasing what the right words might be and what also might be the wrong words. He's wondering what words would even capture what he wants to say. He's afraid, and it's late, and it's like pouring gasoline on hot flames, and whatever comes next is going to burn so tall, and so fast, and it's going to burn him as well.  
  
'Tyler' says the text, sent at 3:17 in the morning. 'where are you?'  
  
A single noise is at it takes to wake him. The light nearly blinds him, but his eyes adjusts to the name quickly. 'I'm at home. What happened to you?'  
  
Not even ten seconds passes before another one comes through. 'Panicked. Afraid. Help.'  
  
Anything else in the room doesn't register with Tyler. Just those words on the screen. 'What happened? Breathe.'  
  
Nothing happens. 'Josh' he sends. 'stay awake.'  
  
'Nothing's working, everything's wrong. Help.'  
  
He doesn't even think it through before his fingers start to move on the keyboard. 'Come over.'  
  
'What?'  
  
'You're a block away. Run over here. Please.' he says, and then so as to not give off the wrong messages, 'I don't want you to be afraid on your own.'  
  
On one side of the phone is Tyler, sitting on his bed in a room filled with silence and stuffy air. He's tired, and he doesn't want to say anything that he doesn't mean. But his friend his afraid. This hasn't happened to Tyler before. Usually it's himself who's panicking, and himself who has to drag himself out of it. He doesn't know what the proper response would be.  
  
And on the other side of the phone is Josh, sitting in a room where he's been wide awake for twenty four or twenty seven hours or he doesn't even remember how long, suddenly finding himself in a trapped cage, and he's been offered a key. He's been holding it in for far too long, bottling up the fountain that has hate and upset inside it instead of water. He doesn't know what to do, except try to reach out to what the closet thing is to him, which is miles away from his perspective.  
  
But here's the truth. No matter how much Josh thinks he knows Tyler, or how much Tyler thinks he knows Josh, they're going to be wrong. And now, with no more texts sent, and a boy running out of the house down towards the house with the open attic window, the fire is lit, and it's just waiting patiently for their minds to give it the gasoline it needs to explode.


	3. Chapter 3

In the corner of the attic, there is a collection of notebooks. A collection of writing from years of experience, cold emotion, warm bliss, and the inner cogs of the demons that built their homes in Tyler’s mind. Every time he finished up a notebook, when he’d bled ink onto every line of every page, he’d store it aside, beside his ukulele and old rock collection, up in the attic, his secret hideaway. And then he started a new one, let his mind pour itself out onto fresh pages, until that one had been transformed into a carrier for ideas all filled to the brim. Rinse and repeat, repeat, repeat, until he would run out of ideas, which he was sure would be impossible.  
  
The attic is dark in the early hours of the morning, the only light coming from the tiny flashlight Tyler has brought with him to wait for Josh. He had opened the window for what must have been the first time in his life, brushed the cobwebs away from the latches and put a little stepladder out on the garage roof below, just in case. Besides that, he has nothing else. In truth, he doesn’t know how to help his friend. He isn’t prepared for this type of situation. He’s still in his pyjamas. It wouldn’t have been as bad a problem if it was just a little later in the day. Then, he could find a way to avoid saying anything, or give fake advice that he didn’t need to think twice about.  
  
All because he didn’t want to say the wrong thing. All because just today, the same person he had told to come over to his house in the dead of night had asked him if he believed in soulmates, and he said maybe. Maybe. He should have said no. He should’ve killed the notion that anything good might come out of twisting the truth just enough so that it was still an option, but a pretty unlikely one, while he had the chance. He wasn’t even sure if he’d meant to say it. Perhaps it was a spur of the moment thing, a little hope that just wanted to prove to him that it was still there inside him.  
  
But whatever that hope had created, it was sticking with him into this hour, and he wanted it to go away. It was just a panic attack. He had dealt with himself during panic attacks before, how hard would it be dealing with someone else during one? He didn’t need to say anything about soulmates, or what he believed in, or why exactly he’d told him to come over to his house just for the purpose of making sure he wasn’t alone when he felt this way. He only needed to show that he was his friend, because that’s what friends do, right? They comfort their best friends if they’re having a hard time, no matter how they feel about them. Show he cares, but keep a filter on it.  
  
Every minute Tyler waits for Josh to make his way over is another minute to go over what he’s going to say. He’ll ask Josh what happened, and then he’ll reassure him that he isn’t alone, that he’ll make it through this, all the things he had been suggested to tell himself but never actually thought would make any difference. After however long Josh feels like he needs to be with him for, he’ll leave, and then Tyler would go back downstairs and try his best to find rest again. He wouldn’t say anything else. No truths, no maybes. Just everything Josh would expect him to say, all empty words without second thought.  
  
He waits ten minutes in silence. Wind sends a few leaves flying off of his neighbours tree, floating with the wind as if it's a current of water, and blowing out of sight to find a new home closer to the ground. After a while, he starts flicking his flashlight on and off. Every time it goes off, he feels like he’s so much smaller surrounded by the dark. Every time it goes on, he feels like his shadow is staring at him. He isn’t afraid of the attic, of course. It’s been his favourite place since he started to know his friends. Here, he didn’t have to be Tyler Joseph, and could just be Tyler. Himself, the boy who writes love songs to someone else, and loves to sing, instead of the person who doesn’t like to talk too much, and doesn’t believe in aliens or fortunes.  
  
After ten more minutes have passed without any sign of Josh, Tyler starts to wish he didn’t ask him to meet him in the attic. He says he’s never been afraid of the attic before, but fear is slowly starting to settle inside him right now. This place has always been his safe haven, somewhere he’s gone when he’s tired of pretending, when he just wants to be able to escape the demons for once and feel like he’s full of beauty. But now he has to sacrifice it just to keep his cool around someone else, his someone else, the one he kept coming up here for, the one reason he couldn’t be the same person at school as he was up here. The fear that it wouldn’t go right, that he’d let everything slip is making him wish he was anywhere but here.  
  
Maybe Josh isn’t coming at all, he thinks to himself. Maybe he was in such a state that he couldn’t leave the house. That would be terrible. Tyler can’t imagine that happening to his friend. Maybe he’s scared, too. Maybe he’s going over what the right thing to say is, too…no, he’s having a panic attack. He’s not worried about what to say to Tyler. That would be ridiculous. He didn’t even ask for Tyler to comfort him, it was Tyler who suggested he come over. He needs to stop getting his hopes up.  
  
He’s been sitting in the dark for twenty minutes when he decides he can’t take the silence anymore. So, he starts to hum. It’s a song he heard Patrick playing at lunch today, one he said he really wants to learn how to play on the guitar. Tyler doesn’t know who its by and can barely remember the tune, but it’s good enough to take his mind away from worrying about Josh. He switches to another song once he’s gotten to the part he doesn’t remember at all, and just keeps doing that. Soon enough, Josh isn’t even on his mind anymore. Just whatever part of the song is coming up next, and later on, what words he’s supposed to sing.  
  
"Did you try to live on your own when you burned down the house and home? Did you stand too close to the fire, like a liar looking for forgiveness from a stone?"  
  
His voice echoes off the attic walls, spreads itself through the air and comes right back to him. He knows that his mother and sister are downstairs, and that if he wakes them he’ll have hell to pay, but the alternative would be thinking about Josh…Josh…  
  
"Oh if you only knew the way I felt for so long, I know that we’re worlds apart, but I just don’t seem to care…"  
  
Wasn’t there a song he wrote about him? Yes, he remembers the one he’s thinking of. It was after him and his friends had gone out to see Pete’s friends’ band perform at a coffee house, but him and Josh had gotten lost on the way back. They’d ended up riding the train for longer than they should’ve, and had to walk all the way back to his house in the pouring rain. He remembered they’d talked about Alice in Wonderland, and how they were both afraid of the Queen of Hearts as kids. Once they’d gotten back to his house, they were soaked, and Josh made tea for the both of them.  
  
"I was doing fine on my own and there wasn’t much I lacked, but you’ve stolen my air catcher, and I don’t know if I want it back."  
  
He's written a few songs about Josh, in honesty. Besides his illness and the emotions that balled themselves up inside his mind, he's his inspiration. The someone else who, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get off his mind. There was so much he wanted to say to him, if only he wasn't scared that he would be exposing himself. He wanted to reach out, but he was afraid he would get broken.  
  
"I won't fall in love with falling. I will try to avoid those eyes."  
  
By now, he's gotten out his notebook, one of the oldest ones he has that has all of the songs he remembers writing about Josh. Sometimes he wonders if every song he wrote was about Josh, in some way. He wonders if the thought of him is just always an underlying thought in everything he writes, always thinking about him, how afraid he is to admit it, how he doesn't want anyone to know, because who would he be if people knew that he is....  
  
'But now I'm here to give you words, as tools that can destroy my heart.'  
  
He's in love, he's in love, and he's hopeless. Because no matter how much he is Tyler Joseph instead of Tyler, no matter how many times he reminds himself no one will ever care about him as more than a friend, no matter how many times he practices not caring about him and going over the right words to say, he'll always be in love with Josh. It's a problem, but he's his problem. And he knows that he can never change it. He wishes he could tell him. But the time is never right, and he's never the right person to say it. He'll stay hopelessly in love until he falls out of it....which he was sure would be impossible.  
  
And then the garage coughs.  
  
Tyler stops singing. He looks over at the open window, where a tuft of red hair is peeking over the windowsill. He feels his blood run cold. He wants to turn into thin air. He'd forgotten that that person he'd been singing to was supposed to come over, right now, in the middle of the night to his attic.  
  
“How long have you been there for?” he asks, slowly and carefully placing the notebook behind him as if it was a dangerous weapon.  
  
Josh pulls his head above the windowsill. “About five minutes.”  
  
“Why didn’t you come in?”  
  
“I was listening. If I just jumped inside, it’d kinda be like jumping on stage at a concert.”  
  
“Do people do that?”  
  
“Not me.” he says, and lifts himself in through the window. “I live more than a block away, by the way.” He's wearing his pyjamas as well, which apparently consists of an old t-shirt with a sweater thrown over it, as well as pants that are obviously too long for him. This must be the first time he's seen him without makeup on, Tyler thinks. It's strange, almost as if he's a different person.  
  
“Oh.” He must’ve forgotten. “You…you didn’t have to actually come.” He feels like he’s already made a fool of himself. He lost himself in the love song, and he didn't even notice that Josh was right outside.  
  
But Josh shakes his head. “It wasn’t like I was doing anything better.”  
  
Right. He was having a panic attack, that’s why he’s here. What was it Tyler was going to say to him? All that time he’d spent running over it all again and again in his head, making sure it would go off without a hitch, as if it was a speech instead of a genuine time of need for his friend, and now he’d forgotten it all because he’d been singing.  
  
"Are....you look like you're feeling better." Tyler manages to say as Josh sits down on the attic floor next to him. "What happened?"  
  
"I freaked out." Josh says, sighing. He looks tired to Tyler, like he's been awake for days. "Everything's been too much lately. School, my family, my anxiety, just....something just sent it all overboard and I started freaking out."  
  
"Are you feeling any better now?" Tyler asks him.  
  
Josh nods. "I kind of calmed down a bit on the way here. Thanks for inviting me, by the way."  
  
"It's....it's nothing. I just wanted to make sure you were okay." Tyler says. He's so afraid that he's going to let something slip, he almost doesn't want to say anything. He's desperately trying to remind himself that Josh doesn't care about him, but for some reason, it isn't working. He's just frozen, stuck in place.  
  
They sit in silence for a minute or two. Tyler isn't sure if he should say anything, or ask Josh if he wants to leave. The one thing he wants to do is run back downstairs and pretend like none of this ever happened.  
  
"You sing?" Josh asks, breaking the silence.  
  
"Oh, um, sometimes, sure." Tyler answers. No, no, this is the last thing he needs. Stay quiet, stay quiet, he doesn't care, remember? He's just being polite, Tyler tells himself.  
  
"What was it called? Not the Green Day ones, the last one." Josh starts tapping his fingers on the floor to a tune Tyler doesn't recognize.  
  
"It....I never really gave it a name." Tyler says, sliding the notebook out of Josh's view. He wishes he'd just kept quiet. If he'd just waited in silence, none of this would be happening the way it was.  
  
"You wrote that?" Josh asks. Oh. Tyler feels like smacking his head. But he just nods instead. "I didn't know that. What other secrets you got? You secretly know an alien?"  
  
Tyler forces himself to laugh a little. "It's not really that important."  
  
"It's a nice song." Josh says, and Tyler wishes he didn't. "You sound good."  
  
"Thanks." Tyler responds, desperate to change the subject. "What made you freak out?"  
  
"I was thinking about a friend. I was worried that they didn't really like me." Josh says. "I guess I really care what people think about me. Maybe a little too much."  
  
"You shouldn't worry." Tyler says. "You're pretty nice."  
  
"A genuine compliment. Wow." Josh says, nodding. He pauses. "The thing is, they're a great person. I've known them for a while. It's not that they're distant, it's just that I'm not good at keeping friends."  
  
"If they're really your friend, they'll keep the friendship for you." He can't tell if he means it or not.  
  
Josh nods. "You ever consider starting a band?"  
  
"Like everyone else?" Tyler shakes his head. Besides the impossible things he daydreams about, his future is pretty uncertain. "Just because I sing?"  
  
"Well, you could be a songwriter." Josh suggests. "You've ever written anything else?"  
  
"No." Tyler lies. "Do I know the guy who you're friends with?"  
  
"I think so. He's kinda strange, kinda creepy, kinda quiet. Nothing special to most people."  
  
"Is he special to you?"  
  
Josh nods. "But I was worried that he doesn't care about me at all. Sometimes I think he doesn't care about anything. Maybe he'll surprise me one day."  
  
"I was thinking the same thing about someone else." Tyler says it before it can register with him.  
  
"Do I know that person?"  
  
Tyler pauses. Then, he nods. He can't say anything, but he feels like he's losing control.  
  
"Was that the person you were writing that song about?"  
  
Oh god. "Why do you keep asking about me singing?"  
  
Josh pauses. "You have a nice voice." he says. "The person I was so concerned about never sings. It's a pretty sound."  
  
Tyler doesn't know what to do. Here is Josh, his someone else, sitting so close he can hear him breathe, telling him he likes to hear him sing. He can't keep this up for much longer. Sooner or later, he's got to tell him. It'll eat him apart if he doesn't. "Do you....do you wanna hear me do it again?"  
  
Josh smiles. "Sure."  
  
There is no going back from what he has to do. One half of him is pushing him towards the edge, saying 'just go already' excitedly, and the other half is screaming for him to stop, pulling him back by his hair. It's worth a try, he thinks. Even if he doesn't get it, at least I found out what he thinks of me. He takes a breath, lighting the match, and closes his eyes.  
  
"Wise men say, only fools rush in, but I can't help falling in love with you.  
  
"Shall I stay? Would it be a sin? If I can't help falling in love with you.  
  
"Like a river flows, surely to the sea, darling so it goes, some things were meant to be, oh..."  
  
He opens his eyes, and Josh is still smiling, but it isn't one of his regular shy ones. It's genuine. Like he can't look away. Like he's figured something out and can't let go of the idea that maybe, maybe, maybe it might be true, maybe he might be right. Like he's his someone else. He's his someone else, and he is in love, in love, a million times in love, and it's hopeless but so hopeless that it just might be right. Maybe.  
  
"Take my hand, take my whole life too, cause I can't help falling in love with you. No, I can't help falling in love with you."  
  
He stops, and there's silence for only a few seconds. "You were thinking about me, weren't you?" Josh asks.  
  
"Maybe." Tyler says.  
  
"Don't say maybe." Josh says again. "You sound beautiful."  
  
Tyler laughs a little. "Thanks."  
  
A pause. "Do you want to kiss me?"  
  
No pause. "Yeah."  
  
And then his mouth is on his, and there is silence, but it isn't truly silence. Instead, it's a dark and quiet room in the night, and it feels like they're the only people in the world at that moment. It feels like Tyler isn't sick and isn't worthless, like everything he was so terrified about his just melting away the longer he kisses Josh for. It feels like something is chasing away the demons, better than a daydream, and better than any song he could've ever written. And it's not maybe, it's yes, yes, a million yes's to his someone else, right here and right now, so close he can hear his heart beating. Josh's heart, Josh, not someone else but Josh.  
  
He doesn't want to let go. But he does, anyway. He looks at Josh and they both start laughing, smiling like little kids, Tyler so full of all this happiness that he never once considered possible to feel at the same time.  
  
"Do you wanna do that again?" Tyler asks.  
  
"Maybe." Josh says. "Can I stay?"  
  
"For as long as you want. I'll be right here."  
  
And Tyler and Josh sit in the attic, surrounded by the night outside and the ghosts of Tyler's old thoughts, kissing and laughing and thinking that maybe, just maybe, they could be like this for now on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading! I got so much positive feedback on this, I'm definitely gonna write for bandom again. I've only just recently been dragged into joshler hell and I guess this was what came out of it. Super fun to write, I can't wait to do it again. Feel free to check out my other stuff and my tumblr (@starchilling). Bye! |-/


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